The lawyer is visiting a prison to meet with a violent criminal who has been condemned to death. During the visit, things turn bad, there is a riot where prisoners escape and the criminal escapes taking a lawyer hostage.

Spoofing the entire 1940s detective genre, and his own performances as a bumbling private detective, Peter Falk plays Lou Pekinpaugh, a San Francisco private detective accused of murdering his partner at the instigation of his mistress, the partner's wife, Georgia Merkle.